Hard drive board replacement

[Austinisftw]

While i was getting ready to install a new graphics card i was removing my hard drive and then the plastic on the SATA port broke. I found this site http://www.donordrives.com/pcb-replacement-guide that helped me find the part for my hard drive. after replacing the hard drive i tried to boot into the hard drive and i had no success and i heard clicking from the hard drive. i booted into another drive with windows 7 and kept the broken drive plugged in. after a little while windows recognized that it was a hard drive but didn't show up on my computer. so i open disk management and it prompted me to see if i want to initialize the drive or not.

my questions are the following.

a.) is it because of the board swap that the partitions are not recognized on the drive.
b.) will installing the mbr overwrite the current partitions
c.) could the clicking noise come from the controller not knowing where the heads are?

any over advise is greatly appreciated

 

[Karsten75]

1. Most likely, yes.
2. Yes.
3. Most likely, yes.

 

[Ra_V_en]

2. Yes.

Heresy from a storage specialist... fixmbr (xp) Bootrec.exe /fixmbr (7+)

Controller doesn't click, you can hear it when headers reposition/reset itself... its generally a bad sign when you can actually hear it.

First of all after such board swap i would boot with something like Hiren'S Boot or at least brand related testing software (like SeaTools) and do some low level tests... does this this drive is actually running properly.
If it was just broken plastic then swapping the board should make that drive running like nothing happened, obviously if the board was proper replacement model. If its not running then either you have incorrect board/firmware or the mechanics are already broken.
Before doing any repartitioning better be 100% sure its correct board you got for a replacement, if it is then the data (if not crucial) is the least thing to worry about.

 

[Austinisftw]

i know it's the correct board. but how would i go about get the correct firmware on it, i saw about soldering the ROM onto the new board but i was wondering if there was another way to go about this.

also if you could provide any links to the testing software

 

[Ra_V_en]

What brand/model this drive is?
Btw soldering a chip sounds hardcore to me when talking about HDD even I successfully soldered some SMD things with my old cellphones... this is yet almost impossible without proper tools.... hot air... re-balling bga... damn too much things is about to go wrong.

 

[Austinisftw]

western digital blue: 1tb
modle:wd10ezex-60zf5a0

 

[Ra_V_en]

Here is some bootable CD with WD Data LifeGuard Dos version software (for some reason not available from official WD site anymore):
http://www.userdrivers.com/RAID-HD-Controller/WD-Data-Lifeguard-Diagnostic-5-04f-for-DOS-CD/

Also Hirens Boot... for any other further testing (a must have on every occasion):
http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

I do have the same model of the drive... so if any of those CD's won't be easy enough to handle i can try to make a quick tutorial myself... just make sure you burn them right so it can be bootable 😉

Btw that WD Blue... its so solid drive i probably would just do the same and buy a replacement board just to try to make it run again 😀

 

[Austinisftw]

^ will this erase the partitons? or will it keep the partitions

 

[Ra_V_en]

^ will this erase the partitons? or will it keep the partitions

First one is only a testing software, it wont touch any data as far as you don't choose "Write zeros to drive" which at this point is not needed until we test it. You simply pick Quick or Extended test... both test mainly SMART statuses, which at this point is enough to provide some information.

The second one is a Rescue Boot CD, it contains a pack of different testing and other tools, it wont erase anything as you won't choose option which does it:

 

[fzabkar]

You need to transfer the flash memory (aka "ROM"), or its contents, from patient to donor. Some drives a discrete 8-pin chip at location U12 whereas others embed the ROM inside the Marvell MCU.

PCB suppliers such as hdd-parts.com include a ROM transfer in the price (US$50).

That said, if the SATA power port was damaged but not the SATA data port, then you could hardwire a legacy 4-pin Molex connector to the PCB.